Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/51841
WINERY delivers the most aromatic and supple results for our red wines. New tools have allowed destem- ming and crushing to be separate processes for handpicked fruit. Add to this a pump-free gravity delivery of your new musts to tank, and you have the best (though most costly) process to handle your fruit. I take care not to crush seeds in my grape handling tools. Even ripe brown seeds add astringent bitters to the final wines. By contrast, ripe seeds undamaged and in whole condition can offer large volumes of tannins to a wine without the wine becom- ing drying overall. wine's body is improved only by the seed's ripe quality, so my goal is to enjoy extracting all the volume I want from ripe seeds, while lower- ing extraction on greener seeds via temperature and alcohol. High temperatures allow for rich tannin extract early on, and gen- erous tannins at lower alcohols generally encourage more supple wines; 90˚F is hot, 70˚F the cold peak. I manage greener seeds (read: lower-quality tannins) in reds with lower ferment temperatures. These lower-temperature fermen- tations are for the same length of time, or shorter, than a higher- temperature fermentation (roughly five to seven days), and include cold soaking for skin tannin extract before the seeds are in alcoholic extraction. I use a hot peak tem- perature (90˚F-95˚F) for big skin extraction on ripe wines. This hot- ter approach draws out more gen- erous weight in the wine. Experience has led me to drain and press based largely on tan- nic strength, since flavor and color intensity always come before full tannic extraction in my wine fer- ment style. I let a wine sample settle from the fermenting tank for at least an hour to drop bitter sol- ids. Because I use no pressings in our final wines, this settled sample is a pure representation of the end wine. At pressing, I use free run for my best wines, and use press- ings for my second wines. I find that basket presses yield the best tannins for press wines, since the grapes are pressed once slowly and not tumbled like clothes in a wash- ing machine, which tank presses are made to do. This tumbling in tank presses creates a small amount of very bitter press wine, which does not improve one's best wines. The thoroughness and frequency of mixing are also major factors in Foster prefers to work with uncrushed, destemmed grapes. During fermentation, I think of the seed as the vegetative part of the fruit ferment. When I use stems in syrah, I do so because we have huge fruitiness in our Wash- ington syrah, to which I want to add the complexity of savory tones. Being an organic solvent, alcohol raises the volume and changes the character of tannins. Seed tannins are increased by alcohol, which in turn changes the balance of a wine's mouthfeel. The overall quality of the WWW.VWM-ONLINE.COM JAN - FEB 2012 VINEYARD & WINERY MANAGEMENT 79